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Ron Banks's Page

About me:: My interests are lute and early cittern family instrument making, wire string making, and reverse-engineering early instrument making methods, and I've recently become interested in dong time-and-motion studies of early instrument production methods.

I'm currently taking a short hiatus from building instruments while converting my shop to use hand-tool only methods contemporary with the instruments I build. While I've always used only hand-tools for actually building my instruments, the bulk of the project involves converting my rough stock preparation (i.e. veneer sawing, turning, etc.) to human-powered methods. While the project may sound overly romantic at first, it began out of practical needs (i.e. I need the excercise), and to insure that I can still produce instruments even when my shop time may be too late at night to use power tools. The ability to reduce airborne dust in the shop (larger particles) and keeping my hearing (and fingers) a little longer were other factors that pushed me in that direction as well. At present the overall conversion project should be complete by the end of 2008.

The current task I'm working on for the shop conversion project is a machine to make roped wire strings using only technologies that were present in the 16th & 17th century.

At 17:06 on November 23, 2008, Rob MacKillop said…: Great to have you here, Ron. Interesting 'profile'.
Rob

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